Wednesday, October 22, 2014

To more and more people watching the carnage of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza
last summer, it seemed that Israel
is like a run away truck; picking up speed, engine red hot, exhaust spewing out poisonous gas, racing downhill,
no one at the wheel and heading for a crash. The question is, will we, the U.S., crash
with it?

It seems that our congressional leadership is determined to
keep its blinders on even as more people around the world see that we are on the
wrong side of history.

Last month, the Swedish Prime Minister announced that his
country would become the first in the European Union to recognize Palestine as a state. A
week later, the British Parliament voted 274 to 12 to do the same, saying that
the British public is fed up with Israel’s brutal occupation of
Palestinian land. Last month’s war against Gaza was the last straw. Some of the moral concerns expressed by the
parliamentarians sounded like a foreign language to our congress:

One lawmaker says that the occupation
is “much worse” than apartheid in South Africa. Another says that the
Balfour Declaration of 1917 now seems like a “sick joke,” because it never
guaranteed freedom to Palestinians. Many members offer frank descriptions of
Israeli detention of children and unending settlement expansion. Several
describe Israeli actions in Gaza
as war crimes. One mentions the use of terrorism by Mandela and Begin long
before Palestinians used the tactic. Labor and Conservative members alike speak
of the role of the Israel
lobby in the United States.[1]

Of course, recognition does not solve much. In fact, it
hardly solves anything. Recognition without rights is next to meaningless. After a cease fire and recognition, Gaza will still need food
and medicine, water and electricity. More than 450,000 people have been run
over. According to the United Nations:

At least 2,168 Palestinians
were killed, 519 children and 77 % were civilians.[2]11,321
Palestinians were injured, 108,000 are currently homeless and over 1000
children will be permanently disabled.
142 families lost three or more family members in the same
incident. At least 220 schools were
damaged, with 22 completely destroyed.
62 hospitals were damaged, 278 mosques (73 completely demolished). Some of the mosques were historical sites
that dated back to the 7th century. The Gaza power plant remains
inoperable - with electricity outages for 18 hours a day in most areas.

George Galloway, member
of Parliament, identified himself as a life time friend of Israel, abstained from voting on the Parliament’s
recognition of Palestinian as a state because he said that such an act will not
solve the major problems facing Gaza:

I cannot support this motion as it
accepts recognition of the state of Israel,
does not define borders of either state or address the central question of the
right of return of the millions of Palestinians who have been forced to live
outside Palestine.
Israel
was a state born in 1948 out of the blood of the Palestinians who were hounded
from their land. Since then it has grabbed ever more land from the Palestinian
people. In the last five years it has twice launched murderous assaults on the
Palestinian people of Gaza,
some 1.8 million people crammed into what is in effect a prison camp. In the
wake of the most recent war on Gaza,
Israel has
announced its biggest land grab in the Occupied West Bank so far. Israel has
defied UN resolution after UN resolution with impunity…[3].

Richard Ottaway, long time supporter of Israel said that Israel has made him “look like a
fool. I have to say to the government of Israel that if they are losing
people like me, they will be losing a lot of people.”[4]

Of course, it’s hard for the United
States government to condemn Israel for its barbaric bombing of
innocent unarmed people when we are providing the bombs to do it.

Marc Ellis asks:

What is to be thought of world
leaders who know the score in private and continually lie in public? They are
little better than the Israelis gathered on the border of Gaza who cheer each Israeli bomb strike.

Maybe
those Israeli bomb cheerleaders are not far off. Israel was born through violence. Israel has expanded
through violence. Israel
makes sure that there won’t be a Palestinian state through violence.[5]

What recognition does
do is send a message to the world and especially to the U.S. Congress that Palestine has not yet been
pushed under the rug. It also sends a
message to the people of Palestine
that they have not been forgotten in spite of all the efforts of self-serving
politicians, irresponsible media and silent pulpits. The British Parliament,
along with Sweden
and 130 other countries have said, we
have not forgotten you.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said that the church (synagogue and
Mosque) has three obligations to the State. First, to ask the State if its
actions are legitimate. Second, to aid the victims of State despotism. And third,
to jam the wheels of State when it runs over people. When a mad man drives down a crowed street, we
must put spikes in the spokes of the truck.[6]

Of course, the Israeli government never heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
and couldn’t care less about the British Parliament. But, an increasing number
of people both in the U.S.
and around the world watched the news from Israel/Gaza and are saying, there is
something wrong with this picture. And that angers Israel, which in itself makes me
feel that we may be clogging the wheels of the Zionist truck.

Thomas
Are

October 22,
2014

[1]
Mondoweiss, British Parliament Sends a
Message to Obama: The People see Israel
as a “Bully., Oct. 15, 2014

Sunday, October 12, 2014

For years, we have heard Benjamin Netanyahu try to push America into a war with Iran. Just last month, while at the United
Nations, Netanyahu:

Declared Iran
the “gravest threat” to the world, saying that defeating ISIS without also
defeating Iran
“is to win the battle and lose the war.”

He said that he did not believe Iran is actually opposed to ISIS even though Iran has had troops in Iraq fighting ISIS
for months.[1]

Again, the next day, meeting with President Obama, it is
reported that his main agenda was to “not let up on sanctions against Iran.”
Referring to what he called a “global concern” about Iran’s nuclear program, he declared
that in order for diplomacy to work, those pressures must be kept in place.”[2]

I remember John McCain, when running for president, responding
to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about Iran. Glibly, McCain referred to a popular singing
group, and with a smile said, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”

The same people who were so eager for us to attack Iraq several
years ago, saying that it would be a “cake walk,” that our troops would be
greeted with flowers,” are at it again. They assured us then that a war with Iraq would cost
us nothing. It would pay for itself. Yet,
two decades later, we are still stuck in Iraq and paying an enormous price. It is amazing that none of the war-hawks who
are now saying, “no friendly relations with Iran.” are willing to admit that
invading Iraq
was a mistake. Forget Iraq, they say.
Attack Iran.

I think an attack on Iran would be foolish. Iran
is much stronger than Iraq.
Some say, twenty times stronger. If there would ever be a case of smacking the
tar baby, bombing Iran
is it. Some problems do not have a military solution. Attacking Iran could very
well cause more problems than it solves.

The problem is not Iran, it is salafism. Salifism is a
radical Islamic fundamentalism which rejects everything modern and everything
Western. The salafist are not Shia nor Sunni. They hold no loyalty to any
denomination or nation. Their goal is to
force a society based on the seventh century world of Mohammad and sharia law.
Salafism is dangerous and a threat to many people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
But, it is an idea. You just can’t stop an idea with a bomb.[3]

The analogy is often used that we must cut off the head of
the snake. Sounds easy, but salafism is
not a snake. Recent history shows that salafism
is more like a star fish. Cut off the leg of a star fish and it just grows
another leg, and the leg you cut off becomes another star fish. When Osama bin Laden and his salafist cohorts
flew planes into the towers in New
York and crashed into the pentagon, it was estimated
that less than one percent of the world’s Muslims would call themselves
salafist. Today, nobody knows how many
there are. Some estimate as many as 10 percent.
But this much is certain. Every
time we pull off an Abu Ghraib, a GuantanamoBay, or bomb another Muslim nation, the salafist
groups around the world go into a recruiting mode.

It would be foolish to attack Iran, but not only that, it would
be immoral.

We have often heard that Ahmadinejad threatened to destroy
the State of Israel and annihilate the Jews.
But, the quote referred to by Israel’s Prime Ministers did not say
that Ahmadinejad threatened to drive
Jews into sea. Reading his words in the Farci language, what he actually said
was, “This regime occupying Jerusalem must disappear
from the pages of time.”[4] This sounds more like a moral condemnation, that
a physical threat.

Another consideration when casually talking about a war with
Iran is that back in 1982, when Iraq attacked Iran, even after more than
200,000 Iranians had been killed, “20,000 by poison gas launched by Iraq, 100,000
severely injured by nerve agents, even after the war, 55,000 people were being
treated for illness from chemical weapons,”[5] Iran
did not retaliate:

The real reason for Iran’s failure
to use chemical weapons was not the inability to formulate the necessary mix of
chemicals but the fact that Ayatollah Khomeini had forbidden it on the grounds
of Islamic jurisprudence.[6]

Chemical weapons violate Islamic morality. Now here is the point. The same Islamic restriction against killing
innocent people that applied to chemical weapons also applies to nuclear weapons:

Khomeini’s wartime fatwa prohibiting
Iran from manufacturing or using chemical weapons and Khamenei’s 2003 fatwa
against the manufacture, possession, or use of nuclear weapons – provided
concrete evidence that religious prohibitions on WMD by the supreme leader have
not been mere propaganda but have played a decisive role in determining Iran’s
policy on both chemical and nuclear weapons issues.[7]

For what it’s worth, there has never been an Iranian suicide
bomber and in the past two hundred and fifty years, Iran has attacked no one.

In 1988 the USS
Vincennes shot down an Iranian airline killing all 290 people. President Reagan announced that the Vincennes
was under attack, that the airliner was not in its assigned corridor, that it
was descending, that its transponder made erroneous signals. Yet, when all of these
excuses proved to be false, Iran
launched no retaliation.

I wish our media would give fair press to Iran. In the days after 9/11, thousands of Iranians
poured into the streets of Tehran to hold candlelight
vigils for the victims in America:

Tehran
asked nothing in return from the Bush administration for its help, which
included putting the Northern Alliance at the United States disposal as the
primary ground force component in the campaign to topple the Taliban. … Khatami
asked to visit Ground Zero that he might offer prayers and light a candle in
memory of the 9/11 victim … Tehran also offered to send terrorism experts to
open an American-Iranian counter-terrorism dialogue. Bush rejected both
proposals and condemned Iran
as an “axis of evil” in his next State of the Union Address.[8]

In the meantime, Israel assassinates Iranian
scientist and threatens to bomb its people.

Again, It would be foolish and immoral for the U.S. to allow Israel
to pull us into a war with Iran.
For peace in the Middle East, it would be far more just and wise for the US to make a
serious effort to bring about a fair and moral solution toward the rights of
the Palestinians still under Israeli occupation.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Monkeys can outrun and outclimb a man every time, and they
both know it. Yet, the monk often finds himself caught in the man's net. The man knows
he could never catch a monk by trying to outrun him. So, he weaves a basket, places
a coconut inside and makes the neck just open enough for the monkey to get his
hand in but not get the coconut out.
Along comes the monk. He thinks, smells like a coconut. Reaches his hand
in. It is a coconut. Not only that,
it is his coconut. God must have meant
for him to have it. But, the man is coming, which does not bother the monk. He
can outrun the man anytime. All he has to do is get his coconut out of that
basket tied to the tree. Suddenly he is tangled up in a net.

I think that is the story of Israel. Like the monk, Israel can let go of the occupied territories at
any time and have peace, but Israel
refuses to turn loose the coconut. And now, Israel is beginning to feel the net.

Netanyahu had claimed that “ISIS and Hamas are branches of
the same poisonous tree.” Alan Dershowitz, Israel’s
American Defense Attorney, brought it
even closer by declaring, “ ISIS is America’s Hamas.”

ISIS is an extremist Islamist
organization that doesn’t play by the rules, has prepared to behead Americans,
smuggle Americans and Europeans into America with evil intentions on
their mind. The only difference is, ISIS is much further away from the United States than Hamas is from Israel,
but they use the same tactics.[1]

Really? Hamas is an
elected body of government and finds
support in many foreign governments. Its goal is to get Israel’s boot
off of the Palestinian neck and has offered peace in exchange for freedom on
many occasions. Nathan Thrall pointed out in the August 1 issue of the London Review of Books:

It was only after Israel arrested hundreds of Hamas members in the
West Bank in early July, and Israeli airstrikes killed seven Hamas members,
that Hamas began firing rockets into Israel.

The
most frequently repeated myth especially in full pro-Israeli newspaper ads, is
that Hamas’ main objective is the destruction of Israel. It is a charge that was
once true but has since been modified by pragmatic Hamas leaders, who ever
since the late 1990s have offered Israel
a long term truce in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967
borders. In 1997 King Hussein of Jordan
conveyed to Israel
a letter from Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal offering a 30-year truce on
those terms. Israel’s response was an
unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Meshal.

In
2002, Hamas supported the Arab peace initiative offering Israel full recognition and normal relations if Israel withdrew from the occupied territories,
an offer Israel
ignored. In 2006 Gaza’s
former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh sent a letter to George W. Bush offering a
truce “for many years” on the same terms. That letter was also ignored. Finally
in 2010 Hamas announced it would honor any peace plan approved by a majority of
Palestinians in a referendum

Gershon
Baskin, an Israeli peace activist, recounts that in November 2012 he and Hamas
military chief Ahmed Jabari had completed a draft agreement containing
mechanisms for maintaining a permanent truce, with Jabari agreeing to end all
military attacks on Israel.
Israel
aborted the agreement by assassinating Jabari.

Israel again had the opportunity to achieve both
peace and security when Hamas and Fatah adopted a reconciliation agreement
setting up a government pledged to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and adherence to past agreements with Israel…But instead of agreeing to work with the
interim government Israel
condemned it as “terrorist,” and maintained the blockade of Gaza.[2]

On the other hand, ISIS is
a pure salafist ideology which holds no loyalty to any state and has few, if
any friends in the political world. Hamas’ main demand in cease-fire talks is
to end the occupation of the Gaza Strip. It has no stated plan to invade
anyone.

Dershowitz asks, “If we had tunnels coming into the U.S. from Mexico
or Canada,
there is no doubt we would put boots on the ground to destroy those tunnels.”

This is amazing coming from a famed lawyer. Can he make a
case only by denying context and history. We have not imprisoned the Mexicans
for the past 66 years and we have not bombed Canada into devastation. And Dershowitz
knows it. He just hopes the US
media will not point it out and the average American will not care.

Last week, Netanyahu announced that he was coming before the
UN, (Pretty courageous, I thought, since Israel is the most blantent violator
of the UN General Assembly’s resolutions) to refute “the lies of Mahmoud Abbas,” who
said:

Forget about the Palestinians
continuing to meet and discuss while Israel continues to construct
settlements and ignore even the simple commitments it agreed to, such as the
release of prisoners… The Palestinians will not return to any negotiations that
do not take as a starting point the final objective of a Palestinian state alongside Israel,
based on the ’67 borders, and a binding timetable for its establishment.

Abbas used such words as “colonial occupation,” “racism,” a
war of genocide,” “massacres,” and a nation above the law.” But has he lied?

Has Israel
not been an occupying force in Palestine
since 1967? Is a Jewish state with rights and privileges for Jews only not
racism? As for a war of “genocide,” has
this not been the stated goal and practice of Israel since 1948? And as for “massacres and a nation above the
law,” even Americans saw the bombing and destruction in Gaza last summer: more than 2,000 people
killed and 11,000 injured, 3,000 of them children, 1000 permanently
disabled with 1,800 orphaned. As much as
Netanyahu tries to deflect criticism of Israel as “lies.” the nets of world
opinion are closing in on him. Netanyahu’s
strategy of we will keep on killing your people, assassinating your leaders and
blowing up your children until you stop hating us, is clearly not working. Palestinians are determined to hang on.

“But Hamas used their children as human shields,” is often
proclaimed. For the sake
of discussion, let’s pretend for the moment that a Palestinian mother did come
to the door with her child held out in front of her to protect the terrorist
behind her. I have watched a lot of TV cop
shows and never once when the robber came out of the bank holding a hostage in
front of him have I seen the police
shoot down the hostage to kill the bad guy. Yet, Israel excuses the death of over
500 children by claiming that they were shields. Now, stop pretending. There is not one shred
of evidence reported by the world’s press of Palestinians using children or anyone as shields. Because
Netanyahu says it ad nauseam does not
make it true. It is simply his desperate effort to cover up the senseless
killing of civilians including children. I understand his panic.

He is being closed in by his own “refuseniks,” those
military personnel who, at risk of their own freedom, refuse to serve the goals
of “the most moral army on the globe:” because of its ruthless attack on an
unarmed and cornered people.

Another concern of Netanyahu is the threat of Abbas to go to
the International Criminal Court with charges of crimes against humanity and
war crimes against Israel. The ICC has already declared settlements illegal. Obama has referred to settlements as, “unsustainable,”
while Marc Ellis, Jewish scholar and prolific writer asks, “When does
“unsustainable” become “unconscionable?”
I would guess when it is brought before the ICC.

And then comes BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. People of conscience all over the globe ,
from main line churches to the dock workers in Oakland,
California, use BDS as a means to get the
attention of Israel. It is a movement of moral non-violent
resistance which cannot be stopped by Netanyahu’s military might or AIPAC’s
money. BDS is unstoppable and is
growing. It worked in South Africa and it is putting the squeeze on Israel.

And then there is Jewish Voice for Peace, which is a small
but rapidly growing Jewish community which seeks to take their historical faith
seriously. They oppose Zionist Israel
because of the high moral and compassionate standards of the Prophets.

Add all of this together and unless Israel finds a way to pull its fist out of Palestine and let go of its agenda to become a Jewish only
state from the Jordan to the
Mediterranean,
the net is inevitably closing in. At least, I hope so.

Thomas L. Are

I preached for forty three years in the Presbyterian Church before retiring. If anyone would ever refer to me as a Liberation Theologian, I would be pleased. I started blogging several years ago to express my political and religious concern for justice, especially justice for the Palestinians.